This lady sure looks familiar and it’s probably because she’s been on some cable TV series I’ve watched. But it may that I’ve met her at some point or perhaps seen her at a local event too. Either way, it’s a weird, weird deal:
TPM — Shannon Richardson, a Texas-based actress who has had small parts in movies and television shows including “The Walking Dead” and “The Vampire Diaries,” was charged Friday for allegedly mailing a threatening letter to President Barack Obama. She was not charged in connection with the ricin found on the Obama letter or the two other ricin-tainted letters she allegedly mailed to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mark Glaze, the director of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.
Richardson’s arrest marked an abrupt twist in a case in which authorities say she initially contacted law enforcement and accused her husband, Nathaniel, of committing the crime.
It goes on to say she failed a lie detector test. I’ve always been very skeptical of lie detectors. Giving an actress a lie detector? What could go wrong? I’ve met people who say they can beat them and I’d be willing to give that a shot myself under controlled blind experiment conditions.
How soon do you think F MRI testing will result in a truly accurate lie detector? What do you suppose will happen then? I share your distrust for the polygraph.
Lie detectors have been unable to demonstrate that they work at all, and have been rejected as evidence in British and Australian courts that I know of, and probably many more. So yeah, you probably could beat them. That they were used by police anywhere is goddamn scary, as it has been determined that the verdict pretty much solely depende on the interpretation of the operator.
Quite possibly never. It’s not like there’s a Lying Lobe in the brain.
Oh come on. Everyone knows lie detectors are the best way to detect witches. Have you ever seen a duck pass a lie detector test? So if she lies the same as a duck, then… Burn her!
Re Holms @ #2
Polygraph results are also not admissible in Federal Courts and in most state and local courts in the US. An exception is made if both sides agree to such a test and in addition agree to accept the results.
The biggest problem with the polygraph is that a sociopath can pass with flying colors because he’/she has no conscience and thus will not react. Leave us not forget that Aldrich Ames passed several polygraph tests before being outed as a Soviet mole in the CIA.
Sociopaths, and other who feel little or no guilt are prone to false negatives on lie detectors. People who tend to feel unreasonably guilty, some to the point of feeling guilt over things they have absolutely no control over, can get false positives. Of course the tests can be spoofed and fooled. Which is why lie detector results cannot be used as evidence in most courts.
She certainly doesn’t look like the type you might stereotypically be expected to do such a thing. Pretty and evil is worse than just evil. Pretty, evil and stupid enough to do such a thing is even worse.